Mp, p.18
MatchUp, page 18
FEELING A SURGE OF HOPE, Liz touched the screen’s map icon and saw a green dot that revealed her location in the middle of a large, unmarked rural area. She expanded the image and discovered an orange line indicating a road, along with a number for Highway 55. She expanded the image even more, revealing the name of a town—Marsdon—southwest of her.
Her fingers trembling, she started to type a text message and let Simon know where she was. But all she managed was ESCAPED. OFF H55 N. Music suddenly blared from the cell phone.
Damn.
It sounded like the theme from the damned Rambo movies. The trumpets startled her so much that she nearly dropped the phone, touching the Send button before she intended to. As the rousing anthem reverberated through the mist, she flipped at the mute switch.
The sudden silence unnerved her.
Every animal in the forest seemed to have become paralyzed. Birds no longer complained in the trees.
Max didn’t make a sound either.
No way he couldn’t have heard the music.
RUBBING HIS SIDE FROM WHERE he’d tumbled down a slope, Max stalked through the forest.
Abruptly he heard music. Trumpets.
Rambo music.
Then he realized it was the ringtone on Rudy’s phone. To the left. For a fierce moment Max almost charged toward it, but at once the trumpets ended, their echo subsiding into the mist.
He found an unexpected stillness inside him.
What would the big guy do?
Would he charge ahead?
No damned way.
The scum he’d hunted never knew where he was.
Rambo just struck out of nowhere and . . .
Listening for any sound that Sansborough might make, he changed his phone to mute.
Then he texted Marta.
BITCH ESCAPED. RUDY’S DEAD. HUNTING HER.
After studying the ground ahead of him, he stepped onto soft pine needles—exactly what Rambo would do—and moved silently toward where the music had come from.
MARTA GAPED AT THE MESSAGE.
BITCH ESCAPED.
Without the woman, she had no way to rescue Nick. No way to prove that she could make up for her mistakes. No way to keep from being the target of Nick’s fury. She desperately needed help, but the rest of the gang was in Texas, working on two hijack jobs that she hoped the police would blame on a rival gang—an idea that she hadn’t told Nick about and for which he would surely now punish her.
She pulled a .40-caliber Sig Sauer from a drawer, made sure that its twelve-round magazine was fully loaded and that a round was in the firing chamber. She scooped an extra magazine from the drawer, shoved it and the pistol into her purse, and hurried from the office.
IN THE DARKNESS OF THE trunk, Nick struggled to breathe as shallowly as possible. The stench of the spare tire and oily rags made him sick. He thought he smelled the bitterness of engine exhaust also, but if that were true, surely he’d be dead by now. His arms ached from the tight angle at which his wrists were duct-taped behind him, but no matter how much he squirmed, he couldn’t loosen the tape.
Sweat streaked his forehead.
A bump sent a jolt of pain through the swelling gashes on his face. He was as furious about the damage to his handsome features as he was about anything else that the bastard driving the car had done to him. But he was even more furious because Marta’s carelessness had gotten him into this mess.
Your sister’s waiting for you, the man had said.
And she’ll be sorry, he vowed.
IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT SIMON blended with the rush of vehicles on the Beltway. Back at the safe house, the FBI agent had said that he wasn’t due to be relieved until nine tonight. So the police had no idea what happened and wouldn’t be looking for the car.
In theory.
He tried to figure the best way to arrange the exchange and get Liz back. As he visualized vantage points around the Lincoln Memorial, he heard the ping of a text message coming through. He snatched up his phone from the seat next to him.
What he saw made him inhale sharply.
ESCAPED. OFF H55 N.
From a sender named Rudy Voya.
Who the hell is that? And where’s the rest of the message? The name’s Russian. Did Liz really escape, or was Marta playing with him? Trying to draw him and her brother away from Washington?
Knowing that H55 was the scenic highway west of Washington, he made an abrupt decision and took the first exit that allowed him to speed in that direction.
LIZ CONTINUED ALONG THE SOFT bank of the stream.
The trickle of the water hid the few sounds she made, but it also hid any sounds from Max. With trembling fingers, she typed the rest of her message to Simon.
NE OF MARSDON. A LODGE.
The moment she sent it, she tightened her grip on the knife and struggled to get control of herself. So far, she’d merely been fleeing. But she remembered what her CIA instructors had taught her during training exercises at the Farm.
If you’re on the run—in the city, in the countryside, it doesn’t matter—if you don’t have a plan, if you’re just reacting, you’re going to lose.
Following the stream had the merit of giving her a course, but when she looked again at the map feature on her phone, she found an overhead photograph of the area. The stream meandered, sometimes curving back to the middle of the forest, where Max was surely searching for her. But if she veered from the stream with no landmarks to guide her, only the phone’s GPS would keep her from wandering in the mist—and not for long. The battery-charge indicator was at twenty percent.
Soon the phone would be dead.
How long until the sun went down? Could she hope to find her way out of here by then, or would she be forced to hide in the dark?
The lodge.
Earlier, without cell-phone reception, she’d thought about heading back there until she came within Wi-Fi range and could contact Simon. But now that she’d been able to send a text, her only thought had been to put as much distance as she could between her and Max. It was counterintuitive for her to go back to the lodge. Max would never expect it. She thought about the weapons there and the communications equipment. She could lock the doors and send for help. The place looked like it had the strength of a bunker. Max and whoever came to help him wouldn’t be able to break in before the police arrived.
Ready with the knife, she turned away from the stream, stepped warily over patches of leaves, and headed toward her best chance to survive.
MAX RECALLED WHAT RAMBO HAD said in the second movie.
The best weapon’s the human mind.
Yeah, right.
The guy’s got a body like a chunk of granite and he wants to talk about his mind. But he decided the advice was good. He didn’t know the first damned thing about chasing someone through a forest the way Rambo did, with his bow and arrow and knife like fucking Tarzan. It didn’t matter. All he needed to do was be smart.
And use his phone.
He assumed that, when the outburst of Rambo music had suddenly ended, it meant that Sansborough had put Rudy’s phone on mute. Not that it mattered. He and Rudy had each installed the “find” app on their phones, adding each other to the lists. When he opened the app and told it what to look for, son of a bitch, a map appeared. A dot showed that Rudy’s phone was to his left, heading toward the lodge.
He knew what that meant.
She was trying to get to a gun.
He almost raced in that direction, but couldn’t do that without making a lot of noise and warning her.
Be smart.
He picked up a rock and hurled it high into the air, throwing it as far as he could, way beyond where he estimated Sansborough might be. The rock crashed down through mist-cloaked branches, snapping twigs, thumping onto the ground and bouncing. Its trajectory was almost straight down. He hoped it would make Sansborough unable to guess from which direction it had been thrown. He used that noise to hide any sounds that he himself made while he simultaneously moved parallel toward where Sansborough was.
That’s smarter than Rambo.
When he saw that the dot on his screen came to a stop in reaction to the noise from the rock, he grinned and hurled another in that direction, high and far. Again, he used the crashing, snapping noise to prevent her from hearing him step carefully toward the lodge.
Definitely.
Smarter than Rambo.
He tossed another rock.
With luck, he’d be waiting when she crossed the parking lot.
WHEN SIMON SAW THE HIGHWAY 55 road marker, he resisted the urge to drive faster, needing all his strength of will to continue to blend with the stream of traffic. If a policeman stopped him and wondered why he was driving a car that wasn’t registered to him, if the policeman used that excuse to search the vehicle and looked in the trunk, it would all be over.
His phone chimed.
Another text coming through.
Again he felt pressure in his chest as he looked toward the seat next to him and saw that Rudy Voya had sent a new message.
NE OF MARSDON. A LODGE.
ANOTHER ROCK CRASHED THROUGH UNSEEN branches beyond Liz, breaking twigs and crunching down onto leaves.
The echo reverberated through the mist.
The afternoon’s chill sank deeper into her, aggravated by her growing fear about whatever trick Max was planning. Obviously he was using the distraction of the rocks to hide any sounds he made. She doubted that he could have gotten ahead of her.
Which meant he was throwing rocks from behind her.
That tactic could work for her too.
She slipped the phone back into her pocket, freeing her right hand so that she could pick up a rock. She turned and threw it high in the air, imitating what Max had done. Maybe she’d get lucky and hit the bastard.
At a minimum she hoped to confuse him.
The rock struck an invisible branch and made more noise as it dropped past other branches. She used those precious seconds to risk the subtle sounds she couldn’t avoid, as she clutched the knife and crept onward.
MAX FLINCHED FROM THE CRUNCHING sound that his shoe made on the gravel of the parking area. The forest had been a vague hulking presence in what was now a misty drizzle. Now all of a sudden there weren’t any shrouded trees ahead of him. He stepped back onto soft earth and inched quietly to the right toward where his phone showed that Sansborough wasn’t far from him.
He thought he heard her moving past trees.
But maybe not.
It didn’t matter.
In a few seconds, she would step onto the gravel. The noise she made would give her away. She wouldn’t be able to recover before he lunged toward the noise and shot her.
In the face. In each breast. In the stomach.
For Rudy.
He knew that Marta would want Sansborough alive, to exchange her for Nick. But the truth was, Max didn’t like Nick. On the other hand, Rudy had been Max’s cousin.
His friend.
No more watching Rambo movies with him.
No more joking around.
Close to him, a shoe stepped onto gravel.
Shouting to engage her startle reflex and momentarily paralyze her, he rushed ahead, firing.
THE SIGN AT THE SIDE of the highway—Marsdon 20 miles—increased Simon’s feeling of urgency.
So close.
The clouds darkened.
A misty rain blotted the countryside, obscuring the beauty for which the area was famous. He switched on the windshield wipers and glanced toward his phone, hoping to receive another text.
When he finally made it to Marsdon, then what?
There were a lot of woods out here.
A black SUV sped past him, hurling spray across his windshield.
MARTA ADJUSTED THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS to a higher speed and pressed harder on the SUV’s accelerator.
LIZ’S SHOE CRUNCHED THE GRAVEL of the parking lot, the noise seeming so loud that she recoiled, nearly dropping the knife. Someone suddenly shouted to her left.
Max.
His footsteps thundering toward her.
Gunshots roared.
A bullet tugged her right sleeve.
It would have struck her chest if she hadn’t lurched back from the sound she made on the gravel.
Adrenaline broke her paralysis.
She saw Max’s indistinct shape charging into view. She had a rock in her right hand, having planned to throw it and distract him one final time before she raced toward the lodge. Now she hurled it toward his increasingly clear face and ran into the forest.
The drizzle started to dissolve the mist.
Trees began to materialize.
Hearing Max curse behind her, she stretched her long legs farther, faster. Finally able to see where she was going, she zigzagged frantically through the bushes and trees.
FOR A MOMENT MAX THOUGHT that he’d been shot, but then he realized what had struck his forehead.
A rock.
He raised a hand to the already throbbing, swelling lump and felt blood.
“That’s something else you’ll pay for,” he screamed.
His pain-blurred vision cleared.
He heard Sansborough crashing through the forest.
Let her run.
With the mist dispersing, it would be easy to follow her now. He fired once more in her direction, wanting to spur her into a panic, knowing that adrenaline would soon make her hyperventilate and sap her strength.
It wouldn’t be long now.
He took the almost-expended magazine from his pistol and stuffed it into a pocket. He freed a spare magazine from his belt and shoved it home. A round was already in the chamber. He didn’t need to rack the slide as so many stupid Hollywood actors unnecessarily did.
But never in a Rambo movie.
As the drizzle beaded on his windbreaker, he broke into an easy, confident jog, taking care that his breath rate didn’t increase.
That was the secret.
If his breathing remained steady, everything else about him would be steady. It didn’t matter how far Sansborough got at the start. He could easily track her down, using the “find” app. Ahead, beneath an evergreen branch, he saw something that made him smile.
Blood.
One of his bullets had struck home.
Now he had yet another way to know where she was heading.
LIZ LEAPED OVER A FALLEN tree, landed on wet leaves, slipped, and nearly dropped.
Her right arm felt numb.
She wanted to clutch it, to try to stop the flow of blood, but she had to keep a tight grip on the knife in her left hand. Racing onward, she didn’t understand why she felt out of breath. She’d run in marathons, for God’s sake. With all her stress training, she shouldn’t be breathing this hard this soon. But she’d never run a marathon after being shot.
“Sansborough, what you did to Rudy I’m gonna do to you,” Max yelled behind her. “But you won’t die as fast as Rudy did.”
Her brain raced. How had he known that she’d headed back to the lodge? The only noise made had been when she stepped on the gravel. Nothing before that. Straining to fill her lungs, she veered around a tangle of bushes. Her legs almost buckled, but this time it wasn’t because of slippery leaves.
“Bet you’re feeling woozy from all the blood you’re pumping out,” Max yelled. “Won’t be long now.”
She glanced desperately over her shoulder and felt as though she’d been punched when she saw splotches of blood behind her. If the drizzle didn’t wash them away fast enough, Max could easily follow her.
The question kept insisting.
How did he know she’d headed back to the lodge?
Running, she felt the lump of the phone in her pocket.
A wave of fury gripped her.
He was using that to track her.
She pulled out the phone and threw it away.
“You sound like you’re running a little slower,” Max shouted. “Legs feeling weak? It won’t be long now.”
Breathless, her legs losing strength, she peered down at the knife she clutched. She felt so light-headed she had to take care that if she fell, she wouldn’t land on it. The blade had sawteeth on the back, reminding her of the knife in a Rambo movie she and Simon had seen on television. The damned things were broadcast every week, it seemed. Rambo had unscrewed the cap, revealing a hollow handle that contained a needle and thread with which he’d sewn a wound shut.
Running, Liz unscrewed the cap on this one.
The hollow grip contained nothing.
She remembered a scene in which Rambo had burst from the camouflage of branches and—
JOGGING EASILY AFTER HER THROUGH the rain, Max glanced occasionally at the find app on his phone. Even though the noise Sansborough made was easy to follow—and to a lessening degree, the blood—it never hurt to be extrasure. Passing a tangle of bushes, he frowned when he saw that the dot indicated that Sansborough wasn’t straight ahead as the blood track indicated but instead she was to his left.
Somehow he was passing her.
He stopped and aimed toward a tangle of bushes. Was she hiding behind them? But he didn’t see any blood leading in that direction.
Wary, he took a step closer.
Another step. He tightened his finger on the trigger. Then he saw the phone on the ground. Dammit, she’d figured out what he was doing and thrown it away. Now he had only her blood and the sounds of her running to tell him where she was. But he no longer heard her running.
Had she collapsed from loss of blood and the shock of having been shot?
He returned to the trail she’d left and followed at a cautious walk. As water dripped off the brim of his baseball cap, he scanned the trees on each side. He passed a tall boulder and checked behind it. The rain had finally washed away the blood, but her footprints were more obvious, collecting water.
He moved faster.
He came to the stream and saw where she’d slid down to it. When she’d struggled up the opposite side, she’d made deep furrows in the mud. He stepped over a fallen log, eased down the slippery bank, started across the stream, feeling how cold the water was, and suddenly gasped from a blow to his back that hurtled him into the water.
